Villagers forced out of their homes by riot police

In less
than four years the village of Taiping in Chengdu, the
capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, has seen
over 70% of its residents expelled by the authorities. Despite fervent protest
on the part of the inhabitants, there are now only 300 houses where 1000 used
to stand, and still the project continues. The most recent development in the
programme has seen 33000 square metres of collectively-owned land sold - in
secret - to developers for 1.2m RMB (€115,000). This amount is considered to be
extremely low for such an area and, furthermore, the villagers who live on the
land will receive almost nothing from the payment.

Forced out
of their homes by riot police last Friday afternoon, two of the residents ended
up in hospital - one of them 82 years old. Cut off from electricity and water
by the government, the entire village had slowly become more and more
inhabitable every day.

And the
villagers' part of the deal? Three percent of the payment divided between all
of them. Any right to complain? Petitioners against the plans were either
imprisoned or silenced.

Videos

This video
was taken after the residents of Taiping were banned from their village. They
were prevented from returning to their homes by riot police.

Video
posted on YouTube by ‘RFAVideo', 11 January 2008.

In a
similar case, over 400 officers were sent to demolish two villagers' houses in Chengdu. More than 200
local residents came out to protest, but they were ignored and the inhabitants
were unable to re-enter as the buildings were demolished.

Video
posted on YouTube by ‘RFAVideo', 31 December 2008.

On 26
December last year, the government of the Baima community in Dongguan City
(south) forced 1000 home-owners to sell their houses to them for €800 each. The
government then went on the sell the plots of land for over €8000 each. The
villagers came to the area to protest, but were faced by riot police. Ten of
the protesters ended up in hospital.

Commentary from Chinese blogger He Weihua

He Weihua is a blogger from Leiyang City, Hunan Province:

By January
last year, the Ministry of Supervision and the Ministry of Land and Resources
had already counted 22,395 breaches of land law.

The
developments started after the National Council gave permission to developers
to plan in rural areas. In September, the Department for National Development
and Reform announced that they ‘aimed to promote urbanisation'. The project
plans to move 75% of peasants out of their villages and into urban areas.

While three
thousand million peasants swarm into the cities, three thousand million farms
and homes will become national property. This is all to do with accumulating
capital for people who are already wealthy.

The fact
that rural, collectively-owned lands have suddenly become state-owned simply
means that the government is depriving their people of human rights. They took
that land with force! Land-law is human rights!"